Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Let me first explain what I appreciate about this device, and then below at the end of this review, I will address two recurring issues mentioned in less positive reviews. First, let's get it out of the way, this device is wonderful, and here are just some of the things it does: — It connects to the OBD2 (On Board Diagnostic 2) port of your car, which is how mechanics get all their information on a car. — It connects to Automatic's cloud servers with a 3G chip, so you never have to pair it with your phone or anything of that sort. — It stores in real time your itineraries and a lot of data on your car and driving style. My four big reasons to buy Automatic are: 1) This data that you collect is largely your own and not tied to any insurance provider (such as Progressive's Snapshot, or the very new and very neat pay-per-mile system called MetroMile). 2) Your data can be FULLY exported (including the step-by-step directions). 3) The interface is clean (both the app, the web dashboard) and the set-up was seamless. 4) It provides a wealth of information on how much you drive, how you drive, how your car is doing, and how much you are spending on driving—it also provides an easy way to visualize all this data, and possibly improve your routine. 5) You will never forget where you are parked (in my iPhone widget center, I have an Automatic widget that always tells me where my car is, see screenshot). In particular, with all this information, since I got Automatic, it has encouraged me (and made it fun) to improve my driving style: driving smoother, safer and with the best mph efficiency is fun, if you get to see how your efforts are actually making a difference. This is not the only thing Automatic can do, another very promising feature is that it can connect to IFTTT. But that is gravy on the top, compared with this amazing amount of data—at least it is for me. If you like data, if you like looking at the plots of the number of steps you have walked, if you're a millennial, then you're probably going to love this, and find it worth your money. Do note that they have just been bought by Sirius.XM. Currently, it seems as though there are no plans to absorb the staff—it will stay its own company and product. I hope that does not change! Last thing, before buying this, you should take a look at their dashboard. I find it pretty impressive. It is really one of the best interfaces I have ever seen that is able to handle and display data with such ability to slice and dice what you're looking at. For instance, it is visually impressive to see all the trips you've ever taken overlayed on top of a map, with the darker spots the roads you have traveled most: see my screenshot for my account as of today with all of the trips—addresses have been blanked out; don't judge my driving score, it is getting better! As you can see in the other screenshot, there is the possibility of narrowing a query down with very precise filters on the distance, or the number of business trips. One neat application is that, for instance, this is the ideal thing to keep track of all your rides if you are a driver on several platforms (Lyft, Uber, etc.), to track mileage for to expense them and get tax deductions. ADDRESSING SOME COMMON COMPLAINTS I'd like two address two recurring complaints: one about the reliability of the crash detection; the other about the reliability of the 3G connection. 1) CRASH DETECTION: The "Most helpful" review for this item discusses how this does not reliably detect crashes. I have no idea whether it does or not, but I can imagine how difficult a problem is: you'll get hell for false positives ("how dare you make me think my son crashed his car?!") and false negatives ("how dare you pawn off a cheap product that left my son injured and alone on the side of the road?"), which means there is zero margin for error. This is not typically the type of niche that can be addressed with a $100 product. As a point of comparison, in the airplane industry where everything needs to be failure redundant to the umpteenth degree, simple furniture like the actual physical chair in coach can cost upwards of the tens of thousands of dollars (!!!). So, no, I do not believe this can detect crashes. I think it's a mistake to market it as such. But I also think that even now, it is hard to market this as bringing cars into the modern age of Fitbit and IoT. I think the difficulty is that it is hard to make the case that there is virtue in getting more data, even today. So they have had to sell a whole bunch of secondary features. 2) CELLULAR 3G CONNECTION: As explained above, what is magic about Automatic is that the device itself has a cellular phone chip, so that it can connect with Automatic's servers seamlessly without you having to worry about it. The slight downside is that in areas with no cellular reception, the device will not be able to connect to the remote servers and so you will not get any information from it (even if you are sitting an arm's length away from it). This is annoying if you live in a rural area and are frequently in the situation where you are without signal—additionally I do not know who's network they are using, but I would assume it is Sprint's or T-Mobile's, like a lot of MVNO. Personally, my apartment is in a cell signal near dead zone. I don't have thick walls or live in a big building and yet, I have one bar of service with T-Mobile (and need to always use Wi-Fi calling when at home). That has never stopped my Automatic from synchronizing properly—so your mileage on this issue may vary. I would comment that for the great majority of people, Bluetooth pairing is a lot less reliable than a 3G link. However, for people who are often in rural, you may find it much more convenient to deal with a Bluetooth model.